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looked the pair up and down in open admiration. “You’re a couple of cool ones, I’ll grant you that,” he said. “As for what happens now: you may as well relax, for we won’t be in Serannian for another three or four hours yet. And there’s only one way off this ship … Straight down! I was about to take a meal. Will you join me?”
    “Food?” said Hero, realizing how empty his belly felt. “That’s not a bad idea.”
    “What?” cried Eldin. “Eat? With a dog who’d play that sort of dirty trick on me? Not likely!”
    Dass shrugged, took Hero’s arm and began to turn away. “Hold!” growled Eldin; and more quietly: “What’s on the menu?”
    “Duck,” said Dass, “with small potatoes and green peas. And liqueurs and brandy from Iztar-Iln.”
    “Brandy?” Eldin’s mouth watered.
    “Aye,” Dass nodded. “Not so fiery as the brandy of the waking world, they tell me, but good for that. Well, are you coming? Or would you prefer good bread and cheese with the pikemen, and a cup of strong green tea to wash it down?”
    Eldin considered for a moment, then said: “I accept your apology!”
    Leading them to his quarters, Captain Limnar Dass chuckled inwardly at the style of these two rogues. He wasn’t sure why King Kuranes wanted to see them, but he would find it a great pity if they were to be punished too harshly. He liked their cut. The dreamlands could do with a few more like these two—
    But only a few …

CHAPTER V
    City in the Sky
    While Hero and Eldin enjoyed the captain’s company, food and drink, above decks a pigeon was taken from its basket and a message inserted into the tiny cylinder attached to its leg; and while yet the adventurers sipped their liqueurs, the bird was airborne over the ship’s billowing red sails and winging for Serannian. Thus it was that as the man-o’-war breasted the cloud-crests for port—which was still distant by more than a good hour’s sailing—knowledge of its coming, and of the passengers it carried, passed into the hands of King Kuranes.
    This was not the first communication the King had received in respect of the two men aboard the man-o’-war. Indeed, over the past twenty-four hours there had been three such messages. This was the first, however, from one of the three ships Kuranes had sent out to search the Cerenerian Sea for a small fishing boat, that same craft stolen by Hero and Eldin in Celephais …
    As for the other messages: they had all been from Leewas Nith. The first had been in the form of the magistrate’s weekly report of court proceedings, in which the case of Eldin the Wanderer and David Hero was
given brief mention; the second had been to report certain matters of burglary, assault and piracy, which crimes had also allegedly involved the same pair of adventurers; and the third had been a wordy report which told a most strange and astounding tale.
    For it seemed that following the enforced exit of the pair from Celephais, proof of their fantastic claims had begun to trickle in. Merchants from Ilek-Vad had brought stories from the court of Randolph Carter himself, where recently a most unlikely pair of rogues had been royally entertained as reward for deeds away and beyond any call of duty. Also, word had arrived from Theelys on the River Tross, where the good wizard Nyrass had his castle. The word was that two men and a girl had flown a huge leaf into Nyrass’ gardens, and that now a Great Tree was growing there.
    Fantastic stories were echoing across the dreamlands from all quarters, tales which seemed to corroborate the many things Eldin the Wanderer had told Leewas Nith in the main courtroom of Celephais. And so the High Magistrate had set about to correlate these many small pieces of information, including what he remembered of Eldin’s seemingly boastful narrative. Except that the Wanderer’s story no longer seemed quite so boastful.
    Eldin had maintained that he and David Hero were real heroes. Now, from what Leewas Nith